


It's Friday (I'm in Love)

by kaspbrak-tozier89 (summercarntspel)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: 1992, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, First Kiss, Georgie Denbrough Lives, Good Parents Maggie & Wentworth Tozier, M/M, Oblivious Eddie Kaspbrak, Other losers mentioned - Freeform, Pillow & Blanket Forts, Post-2017, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Richie Tozier is a Mess, Richie Tozier-centric, Soft Eddie Kaspbrak, Soft Richie Tozier, They're like 16, because i love that kid, get-together of sorts, if you see an error i'm so sorry it's 5am, kinda slow burn, no beta we die like men, oh and, sleepover, this is just a self-indulgent 10k words idk what to tell you, very little plot, we love mags and went in this house
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:07:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23212999
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/summercarntspel/pseuds/kaspbrak-tozier89
Summary: It’s Friday. Fridays are Richie and Eddie days, Rich&Eds Fridays. They used to be Loser Sleepover Fridays, but when Ben and Mike swung after-school jobs at the library (nerds) and Bill and Stan had baseball practice most Friday afternoons, Loser Day moved to Saturday, which left Friday wide open for Richie to annoy the hell out of Eddie in peace.or: Richie and Eddie have a sleepover, and Richie's big, dumb heart is almost too much for him to handle.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 40
Kudos: 301





	It's Friday (I'm in Love)

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from "Friday, I'm in Love" by The Cure
> 
> SPOILERS (kinda) FOR: Heathers and The Silence of the Lambs, since these are what our boys watch most intently.

By the time the bell rings to signal the end of the school day, Richie is about to vibrate clean out of his fucking skin. He’s tapping his toes and bouncing his knees and he feels nervous energy zapping through him from heel to skull.

It’s Friday. He looks forward to Fridays all week, and he’s been a maniac since he woke up, feeling twitchy and giddy almost to the point of panic. In the last five minutes, that feeling has ballooned even bigger inside him, threatening to split him at the seams and splatter the band room’s walls with him.

It’s Friday. Fridays are Richie and Eddie days,  _ Rich&Eds _ Fridays. They used to be Loser Sleepover Fridays, but when Ben and Mike swung after-school jobs at the library ( _ nerds _ ) and Bill and Stan had baseball practice most Friday afternoons, Loser Day moved to Saturday, which left Friday wide open for Richie to annoy the hell out of Eddie in peace.

Sure, sometimes Bev tags along, when she isn't helping her aunt sew or paint things for the local craft shows they set up booths at, but the only consistent members of the Rich&Eds Friday Club are the club’s namesakes.

They have no plans, nothing set in stone, but Richie figures they’ll do their usual: swing by the Family Video and rent a movie or three--it’s Eddie’s turn to pick, but everyone knows he has dogshit taste in movies and, with enough bullying, will let Richie choose something, if only to make Richie shut his mouth--and they’ll stop by the dollar store to snag as many candy bars and bags of chips Richie’s pocket money will buy them, then head to Richie’s house and take over the rec room. If they’re feeling particularly festive, Richie might goad Eddie into building a blanket fort with him with only minor insults to his character--“ _ How goddamn old are you, Trashmouth? A  _ blanket fort _? _ ”--and they’ll snuggle up on the ratty sofa or comforter-covered floor and stuff themselves with snacks before Richie’s mom orders a pizza for herself and Richie’s dad and another for the boys, ruffles their hair, asks how school was. They’ll shoot the shit with her until Richie’s dad gets home, Richie will nod along as Eddie repeats the same five or six stories from the school week, the pizza will be delivered, and they’ll retreat back to the rec room and stay there, gorging on food until they feel sick, playing NES, watching the movies they rent, fall asleep against each other, wake up at ass o’clock in the morning with sore backs, go to Richie’s room, collapse together in a tangle of limbs on the bed until they’re woken up by Maggie hollering up the stairs, asking if they want sausage or bacon with breakfast.

No plans. Just the usual.

That’s all to say that the final few minutes of band class on Friday are always a true test of his willpower. It doesn’t help that Richie’s, like, pretty sure Zoey, one of the girls he’s on the percussion line with, is going to kill him. He’s let his sticks slide out of his sweaty palms at least twelve times since the period started, and every time he bends to pick them up, he feels her glaring at him, shooting daggers at the back of his head. Maybe he should say something, either “sorry” or maybe “fuck off,” he’s not sure which, but then the bell rings.

Richie jolts at the sound, even though he’s been waiting for it, eyes glued to the clock that hangs above the closet door, but he moves fast, shoving his sticks into the side pocket of his backpack as he swings the straps onto his shoulders. He races out of the band room and turns left, pushing through the stream of kids pouring out of the choir room. 

Eddie’s in choir every other day, split between that and band with Richie. He was forced into it by Ben’s whining, begging one of the Losers, any of the Losers, to sign up with him during scheduling for freshman year. Eddie expected to hate it, Ben had and dropped it for woodshop the second semester, but Eddie wound up adoring it, auditioning for solos in spite of his mother’s warnings about how damaging it was to his delicate vocal chords.

Richie still hasn’t stopped teasing him about it, but, really, the day Eddie stops asking Richie to help him rehearse for those dumb solos--even though Stan and Bill both play piano a hell of a lot better than Richie, who pounds the keys--is the day his heart will break. If he plays his cards right, and maybe stops tripping Eddie up by playing the wrong part just to fuck with him, that day will never come.

He sees Eddie through the open choir room door, leaning against the podium and talking to the choir director. Richie watches the way Eddie’s nose scrunches up when he giggles about something, and it makes that thing inside him balloon up even more, then he feels something clench inside his chest. He wonders, idly, if it’s his big, dumb heart.

This isn’t a new feeling. Richie wonders, too, if it’ll ever fade, but he secretly hopes it won’t. It drives him crazy and he’s cried until he’s puked about it more times than he can count--sometimes alone, usually to Stan, sometimes to Bev, after they get high together in her garage and Richie is crashing too fast, skidding back into the real world like he’s walking on ice and his shoes have no tread--but he doesn’t really know what his life would be like if his gut wasn’t inundated with squirmy butterflies every time he lays eyes on Eddie.

Mushy as it sounds, it probably wouldn’t be much of a life. 

“Yo, Spagheds! Ándale, babycakes!”

Richie shoves past someone and wiggles into the choir room, stares at Eddie with his eyes big and moony behind his glasses as he moves to Eddie’s side and slings an arm over the shorter boy’s shoulders. He will forever relish in the fact that he’s almost a head taller than Eddie. If the kid ever hits a real growth spurt, Richie will cry for a week.

Eddie’s nose scrunches up again, this time in what might look, to the uninitiated, like disgust and anguish. Richie knows better, though. Eddie’s eyes are bright, big and brown and puppy-dog, and he doesn’t move away or even bat at Richie's arm.

Sometimes, Richie wonders if Eddie  _ knows _ \--Stan reminds him at least six times a day that if there’s one thing he isn’t, it’s  _ subtle _ , never has been, has made goo-goo eyes at Eddie since fucking kindergarten--and sometimes he wonders if Eddie  _ reciprocates _ . The second one is a pipe dream at best, and sometimes it hurts to even think about it as a possibility.

But Fridays really make him think he’s got a shot. That hurts, too, but it’s a good hurt, so he can’t complain much.

Except to Stan and, occasionally, to Bev. To them, he’ll complain until he’s goddamn blue in the face, interspersed with him explaining, in great detail, how very difficult it is not to pop a boner when Eddie Kaspbrak is squished next to you in a hammock, wearing those tiny red shorts.

Once, he mentioned those shorts and his dick more than three times in an hour, the established limit, and Stan slammed a fist into his inner thigh, barely missing his balls. That shut him up fast.

The shutting up lasted thirty seconds, but he changed the subject, so, point for Uris.

“Inna minute, Rich,” Eddie says, still not pulling away. If anything, he leans further into Richie, and Richie swears he goes lightheaded when he gets a good waft of Eddie Smell up his nose, all soft soap and fruity shampoo and scent-boosted laundry detergent, and yep, hello, there are those pesky butterflies, kicking him in the gut.

God, Fridays are great.

\---

  
  


“So, what are we thinkin’ the mood is tonight, my little pasta primavera?” Richie asks as he sweeps into Family Video, Eddie in tow as the little bell above the door jingles. He spreads his arms as wide as he can, fully ignoring Eddie’s protests about being called everything and anything on the local Italian restaurant’s menu. “The store is your oyster, amore mio.”

Eddie just rolls his eyes and shoves him, but Richie takes it in stride, shoving him back and grinning, crossing his eyes, sticking out his tongue when Eddie glares at him. It makes Eddie crack a smile, even though he clearly spends several long seconds fighting it, and Richie feels his own grin soften to match.

They’d made pretty good time getting to the store, after Eddie stayed after the bell, with Richie’s arm wound loosely, comfortably across his shoulders, to talk to the choir director about the auditions for the spring musical. They were coming up, and Eddie was trying desperately to prepare himself--he hadn’t auditioned the spring before because his mother forbade him, but another year of juggling what she wanted versus what he wanted made up his mind for him. He was auditioning whether she liked it or not.

Richie, truthfully, hadn’t been listening much to the conversation, even though it was happening in front of him. He nodded along and made all the appropriate humming sounds, but he let himself drift a little to the sound of Eddie’s voice, too loud and too fast, chock full’a spitfire energy and that furious desire to be listened to. If Richie had had a pillow and a blanket, it probably could have lulled him to sleep right there on the choir room floor.

When they bade the choir director goodbye, they stopped at their lockers and grabbed their heavy coats, switched out the books in their backpacks. Winter in Maine is no joke, but Richie still tried, like always, to leave his Carhart unzipped. He had to steel his face when Eddie turned to him and zipped it, unfurled the tucked-in collar against Richie’s neck, lectured him about why covering his arms and exposing his torso was a  _ dumbass idea, shit for brains, don’t ya’know where your fucking vital organs are, Richie?  _ He’d risk his vital organs any day of the week to have Eddie take care of him like that, touch him gentle and rough, shout in his face about bronchitis.

It’s become a serious problem, and Richie is hopeless to fix it, so he’s just gonna ride the wave for as long as he can, goddamn it.

Eddie, to Richie’s surprise, walks to the section of the video store marked Horror and Thriller and stands there, hands on his hips, squinting at the rack of VHS tapes like he’s gonna take their lunch money.

“Have we seen this one?” Eddie asks, stabbing a finger at the cover of _The Silence of the Lambs_.

The movie is over a year old and  _ of course _ they’d seen it. Richie had seen it at the Aladdin with Mike and Bill, had to slide the pimply kid in the ticket booth an extra five bucks to sneak them in. The three of them had crushed the books it was based on; it satisfied that odd itch for consuming true crime and horror stories. It was probably the trauma-- to be fair, killing an alien space clown and saving your best friend’s kid brother from It’s clutches doesn’t come without its share of inner turmoil--but that was fine, it was something to bond over. And bond they did, having three-way phone calls to discuss theories because the others always bitched when they talked about it at lunch or while they all hung out together. Richie’s mom called it his book club, and the three of them had been sharing tattered crime novels ever since.

They’d seen it as a group when it first came out on VHS, after convincing the other four that it was damn good, during a sleepover at Bill’s. Richie remembers because they had to tell Georgie to stop sneaking in to watch it surreptitiously over the back of the couch, like, eight times and Eddie had, at one point, interlaced their fingers together and nuzzled into Richie’s side when he got spooked.

“Yeah, Eds, don’t you remember?” Richie asks, a grin tugging at the corner of his lips when Eddie doesn’t snap at him for the nickname--he never does, when it’s just the two of them--putting on a pretty good Buffalo Bill Voice, “‘It puts the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again.’” He punctuates this by tickling his fingers over the back of Eddie’s neck until the boy squirms and shivers.

“Fuck you, knock it off,” Eddie whines, twisting further away. He squints at the VHS cover some more, then, with a determined set to his jaw that does  _ something  _ to Richie’s gut, goddamn, grabs it, holds it close to his chest. “Let’s watch it again--I don’t remember how it ends.”

That tracks, Richie thinks, as Eddie leads the way to the section marked Comedy, since Eddie had spent the last twenty or so minutes of the movie nearly in Richie’s lap, curled up in a ball. It had scared him badly enough that he almost didn’t want to spend the night, was afraid he’d have a nightmare and cry in front of everybody, but Richie wound up calming him down by insisting they put on the other movie they rented, _The Brave Little Toaster_. While everyone else bedded down for the night, each claiming their usual spots in the Denbrough basement, Richie stayed up with Eddie, cuddled up tight on the sofa, sharing a single throw blanket. Eddie had conked out after maybe forty minutes of the movie, his hand still holding Richie’s, his head on Richie’s shoulder. Richie let him sleep like that for a bit, but eventually settled him down to lie flat, mostly so Eddie wouldn’t bitch in the morning about a stiff neck and/or insist he had fucking meningitis. After he was supine, Eddie, almost certainly unconscious, made a sleepy, whiny sound and grabbed for Richie, who would up cuddled against him on the sofa, practically spooning the smaller boy, his head nestled into the spot between Eddie’s shoulder blades, trying to calm his jackrabbiting heart enough to get forty winks. It didn’t work.

Richie then spent the following evening on the phone with Stan, pacing through the rec room while he shrieked about it until Stan threatened to hang up and call Eddie right then if he didn’t shut the hell up.

They snag two more movies, _Heathers_ , which Eddie has seen with Ben, but Richie somehow missed, and _The Muppet Movie_ , because it’s a fuckin’ classic and if you rent two tapes from the store for a night, they toss in a third for free, and they’re on their way, Eddie holding the tapes while they traipse across the parking lot and into the dollar store.

Richie has ten bucks burning a hole in his pocket, his allowance combined with the cash his mom slips him for doing a couple extra chores around the house. They spend five and some change, grabbing a half-gallon of chocolate ice cream and a big bag of Salt and Vinegar potato chips, and Eddie produces another few bucks to buy them Funyuns and a candy bar each, a plain Hershey’s bar for himself and a Snickers for Richie. Richie, like always, tries to pay for these, too, says he has enough, but Eddie just shushes him, karate-chops the risks of not saving some of his weekly earnings into his hand as the bored cashier rings them up. And then, like always, Richie makes the same dumb joke about Eddie being a cheap date and not knowing they were going Dutch because, damn, he would have splurged for the whole gallon of ice cream. Eddie elbows him in the ribs and mutters something about how Richie’s digestive system should be thanking God for that. 

The cashier hands them their bag of goodies, which Richie carries, and then they’re on their way out of the store, through the parking lot. They tear into their candy bars as they cross the street, and then they're cutting through the park to get to the residential side of town.

\---

“This thing’s gonna fuckin’ cave in before it’s even finished!”

“Then  _ help  _ me, professor!”

“I can’t fucking reach you to help, dickwad!”

“Maybe if you weren’t so  _ little _ …”

“Say that shit to my face!”

“Sure, pipsqueak, lemme crouch down so we’re eye ‘da eye.”

They got to Richie’s house, stashed the ice cream in the freezer, yelled a hello up the stairs to Maggie, and carried the rest of their stash down to the basement rec room, where it found a home on the rickety side table that Richie’s dad had moved down there when he deemed it too wobbly to stay in the upstairs living room.

After they stripped off their coats and tossed their backpacks in the corner, Richie flicked on the stereo, already tuned to WKIT, opened the closet door, and started tossing blankets and old sheets, kept just for the occasion, to Eddie, who caught on quick and started organizing them by size. Richie assumed it would be a smooth process, since Eddie didn’t even call him a child once, but half the fun of it was being at each other’s throats, so.

Richie, who had spun the couch around so they could rest against the back of it and snatch its squishy cushions to soften their little fort, leaps down from where he’s been standing on one of the sofa arms, trying to finagle a sheet covered in Elmo and Cookie Monster and Grover into a position that won’t wriggle loose within five minutes.

“What do you suggest?” he asks Eddie, hands on his hips, fingers spidered out wide. He can feel himself starting to sweat, and he contemplates how weird it would maybe be for him to run upstairs and reapply deodorant.

Eddie, who is also, it seems, starting to sweat, if the way his hair is curling up at the ends is any indication, stares back at him, arms crossed over his chest. 

“If you would just  _ listen to me _ from the fucking  _ start _ \--”

“I’m listening now!”

“No, you’re not! You’re fucking talking, shithead!”

“I can do both at the same time, Eddie! I’m not fucking brain-dead!”

They go at it like this for several more minutes, Richie eventually closing his mouth for long enough that Eddie can actually speak, and then Eddie is running off to grab two dining chairs so their fort has some structural integrity, and Richie makes an excuse to beeline for his ensuite to slap on another coat of SpeedStick because, holy shit, he gets way too hot under the collar when Eddie calls him names and flares his nostrils. This kid’s gonna be the death of him, one way or another.

When he gets back downstairs, after having spent at least three minutes looking at himself in the mirror and cataloging every flaw and imperfection, and squeezing the zit on his chin that’s, like, just under the skin, there enough to hurt but not yet coming to a head, Eddie has the fort completed, sheets draped from the couch over the chairs that he’s put on either side of the television.

“Took ya long enough,” Eddie snarks, poking his head out of the side of the fort, the sheet that hangs down obscuring most of his face, “C’mon, I wanna play Dr. Mario.”

“Lo siento, senyor, I vas taking ze fattest shit.” Richie says, affecting a Voice that lands somewhere between Dracula and fuckin' Pepé Le Pew, which makes no goddamn sense, but here we are, kneeling down so he can crawl inside the fort. It looks pretty stable, and the glow of the TV lights it up, and it's downright cozy. “It just kept comin’ out, man, like fuckin’ soft serve.”

“You’re fucking disgusting and I hate you,” Eddie says back, but there is no heat behind it, there never really is, and Richie grins as Eddie leans up to fiddle with the NES, booting it up and flicking through Richie’s cartridge collection. “Go get the fucking Funyuns.”

\---

They play Dr. Mario for close to an hour. This is partly because Eddie screeches every time Richie suggests they play something else and partly because Richie absolutely gets a half-chub at the wild look in Eddie’s eyes as he knocks down his virus count. Dr. Mario is the only game Eddie can, without fail, beat Richie’s ass at, so Richie lets him have his hour of fun. That’s what he tells himself, anyway, as Eddie hollers about his triple combo. 

Richie should be pissy, really, should pout and whine that he’s got no spatial reasoning skills (true) and that being directionally challenged makes the game harder (also true), and he really would be saying all that shit if he was playing with anyone else. With Eddie, though, he takes it in stride, and no, shut up, it isn’t at all because of how bright the grin Eddie shoots him is.

After Dr. Mario, they open the bag of Funyuns--Richie tried to while Eddie set the NES up for two players, but Eddie bitched about getting greasy fingers all over the controllers, which, like, aren’t even  _ his  _ controllers, but whatever, Eds--and pop in the first movie. They settle on _Heathers_ because Richie has a feeling they’ll need the healing powers of Kermit after _The Silence of the Lambs_ tonight.

“Are these bitches really playing  _ croquet _ ?” Richie asks around a mouthful of Funyuns as they settle back against the cushions Eddie had wedged against the back of the turned-around couch. He offers the bag to Eddie, who scoops out a big handful, plops them on his chest, and lets the bag fall between them.

“ _ You _ play croquet,” Eddie retorts, nibbling on a broken ring, “We all play at Billy’s literally, like, all the time.”

“Yeah, but--”

“Richie, you made a fucking croquet  _ leaderboard  _ last summer.”

“Yeah, Eds, I know, but--” Richie tries, hand flapping vaguely towards the TV.

“Hypocrite.” Eddie rolls his eyes and munches on a couple of the Funyuns as the scene plays out on the television.

“Her form is shit!” Richie cries out as the one in red--a Heather, he presumes--swings to strike the ball.

“Shut the fuck up and watch the movie!” Eddie screams back, and Richie fixes him with a wicked glare that does nothing to deter Eddie’s own withering expression. With a huff, Richie gives up, leans back into the couch cushions, and, effectively, shuts the fuck up and watches the movie.

Richie pays close attention, too, really gets into the plot, tries to remember which Heather is which, pointedly avoids staring too hard at Christian Slater, who is, by all accounts, hot as all hell. All of his hard work is dashed, though, when he and Eddie both reach for the Funyuns bag at the same time and wind up bumping knuckles.

It feels grossly chick-flick and rom-com of him, but he knows he blushes. Eddie lets him go first and he grabs too big a handful, drops it on his chest, and rests his hand back next to the bag. Eddie does the same, and Richie almost jumps like he’s been fucking electrocuted when he feels Eddie’s pinky finger skim against his own, the almost-empty bag drooping behind where their hands are somehow both touching and not.

Luckily, Heather Chandler bites the dust a moment later, and Richie whoops with reckless abandon, happy for any kind of distraction.

“Holy hell, she ate _shit_! Fuck that table, I guess!” Richie says, his voice too loud. 

He notices that neither of them have moved their hands and he itches to move his away and itches to shift it closer, to wrap his fingers around Eddie’s wrist or skitter them up Eddie’s forearm and Jesus H, he’s going to need more fucking SpeedStick.

Eddie just giggles next to him, certainly more at Richie’s reaction than to the movie itself. He drags his pinky against Richie’s again, then, in a turn of events that has Richie’s heart launching itself against his ribs, curls his little finger around Richie’s, locking them together.

They did this a lot as kids, after they hit the age where they were too old to hold hands. They’d hold pinkies instead as they went “hiking” with Stan and Bill, which really amounted to little more than the four of them scurrying through the woods and trying to find the biggest rock to stand atop, as they walked the perimeter of the gym when whatever sport they were supposed to play was deemed “too dangerous” by Mrs. K and Richie would beg and beg until their gym teacher let him walk with Eddie instead of playing, like, wiffle ball or whatever. The last time they did it was a couple months back, when they inadvertently walked past that fuckin’ house on Neibolt on a late-night Losers Club outing and Eddie sidled up to him, kept knocking their hands together until Richie hooked their pinkies. 

Well, there’s no longer a point to watching the movie at all--he forgets which Heather is which, doesn’t give a fuck how they kick the bucket, doesn’t even have to try to avoid looking at Christian Slater. All of Richie’s attention is on the way Eddie’s hand feels resting against his own. 

\---

They finish the movie--Richie tuned back in eventually, even though Eddie’s little finger never left the crook of his own--and go upstairs to find Richie’s mom sifting through coupons for the local pizza parlors.

“Hey, kiddos,” Maggie grins, an almost-exact match for Richie’s own. When he’s close enough to the table where she sits, she runs her hands through his messy hair, ruffling it fondly. She does the same to Eddie’s a beat later. “What was the first movie today?”

“ _Heathers_ ,” Richie says, leaning against a chair, hands braced against the wooden tabletop, “Winona Ryder and Christian Slater.”

“I think me and Dad saw the preview for that one when it came out,” Maggie nods, pushing a couple coupon sheets towards the boys. Eddie grabs them--he’s better at fast math than Richie, can figure out deals like nobody’s business--and then Richie’s mom gives them another grin. “That Christian Slater’s a good lookin’ kid.”

“Ew, Mom,” Richie scoffs, glancing to the side to check that Eddie is enthralled with his little game of saving the Toziers a couple'a bucks on breadsticks or whatever, and then locking eyes with his mother and mouthing “ _ I know. _ ” He smiles softly when she winks back at him, gratefulness blossoming in his chest.

He’d never been able to hide anything from her, especially when she had him convinced for so many years that his ears turned blue when he lied--that was a rough one to try to talk himself out of when he brought it up to Stan one day in the third grade so, thanks, Mom--and he was so, so happy she was on his team when it came to this whole Richie’s-got-a-big-gay-crush-on-Eddie situation. He wouldn’t have told her outright, probably, if she hadn’t found him curled up on the rec room floor when he was thirteen, the day Eddie broke his arm at Neibolt and Bill punched Richie in the fucking face, and he blurted out that he was only crying because Eddie was hurt, didn't care about his own busted lip. She’d rubbed his back and let him cry himself out, didn’t force him into anything. He didn’t come out ( _ha!_ ) and say it to her until sometime the following year, when he was really starting to understand that it wasn’t just a silly, puppy-love sort of deal. She was supportive, said he could always come to her, said she wouldn’t even tell his dad if Richie didn’t want her to. Richie had been worried that his dad would freak out, but he let her tell him, and, to his shock, Wentworth had come to his room right after, gave him a tight hug, and said he was proud of how brave Richie was, said he and Maggie would always be on Richie's side. 

It was things like that that made Richie feel almost guilty, feel twice as bad for kids with shitty parents, for Eddie and Bev and sometimes Stan and often Bill and Mike and even Ben. But, in the midst of that, he also felt such fierce love, felt so thankful for his folks.

"If we get two larges from Jake's, we get a two-liter of Coke for fifty cents," Eddie announces, turning the coupon page towards Maggie, "It's the best option, I think."

Maggie nods and goes to grab the cordless phone, throwing a "good eye, Eddie!" over her shoulder. Richie can't help but smile at the way Eddie beams at the praise. 

She orders them two large pizzas, one with pepperoni for Wentworth and herself and one with pepperoni and pineapple for the boys. Eddie pretends he's disgusted by the mere concept of it, like the other five are, if Richie fights for pineapple when they're with all the Losers, but Richie happens to know the little twerp secretly loves it and just likes to be a contrarian. Richie hasn't spilled the beans on that one to the gang yet, but he constantly reminds Eddie that he's on thin fucking ice when he's being particularly annoying.

They settle in at the table, Eddie talking animatedly about school, about his upcoming musical audition, things his own mother doesn't give two shits about, but Maggie is always all ears for. Richie cuts in with his own tales from the week, ones both Eddie and his mother have heard already, but he can't help it. He cackles as he regales them with the story of Stan putting a halt to one of Patrick Hockstetter's Holocaust jokes in the middle of Chemistry Lab with a well-timed glare and a crack about Patrick's outfit-- _ at least us Jews know how to get stains out, Jesus,  _ what _ do you use that shirt to mop up? _ \--and Eddie giggles when Maggie clicks her tongue and says it serves him right for being a bully.

Richie's dad gets home and sits through the same stories, claps Eddie on the shoulder at the news of the musical audition. Eddie, again, beams, glows under the praise that he so rarely gets from his own mother.

When the pizzas are delivered, Richie and Eddie take theirs downstairs with a stack of napkins and the fifty-cent two-liter of Coke, get situated back inside the fort. Richie turns on the TV so they can half-watch Family Matters while they eat.

“You don’t wanna put the movie on?” Eddie asks around a mouthful of Funyuns, crumbs from the bottom of the bag, and Richie wants to coo at the way his cheeks chipmunk out. He swallows and dabs daintily at his lips with a napkin from their stack. “Or is it, like… not a movie to eat with?”

Richie grins, chomps into his slice of pizza, howls when the hot sauce and cheese burn his lips and the tip of his tongue.

“Fugh, wha’ the  _ fugh _ ,” Richie whines, “Tha’s hot!” He grabs for the soda bottle and unscrews the cap, sealing his mouth over opening when the Coke starts to fizz up and threatens to spill over the plastic. He takes a big swig, swishes it around in his mouth before he swallows.

Eddie lets out this delightful noise, an odd combination of a disgusted groan and a loud bark of laughter. He shakes his head when Richie drags a hand over the back of his mouth, then tosses Richie a napkin. “You’re fucking nasty.”

Richie wipes his lips roughly with the napkin and balls it up, tosses it back to Eddie and smirks when the other boy yelps as it hits him square between the eyebrows, leaving behind that deep crinkle he gets between them when he frowns.

“Anyway,” Richie says, pausing to blow on his pizza slice before he takes another bite, “it’s not, like,  _ bad  _ bad. If you think you can handle it…?”

Richie honestly doesn’t mean it as a challenge, but the second it leaves his mouth, he knows exactly how Eddie will take it. Eddie’s never one to back down from anything--it’s the Napoleonic complex, Richie is fucking certain of that--and he gets that determined look on his face, jaw set a little forward, eyes narrowed.

“Put it on,” Eddie says, pointing to the television with one hand as he brings a slice to his mouth with the other, blowing on it before he sinks his teeth in, “I can handle it.”

\---

Eddie handles it... maybe in the loosest sense of the term, but he handles it. He does fairly well for the first twenty minutes, munching on his pizza and blinking owlishly at the television screen. Richie watches Eddie more than he watches the movie, which is nothing new for Rich&Eds Friday Club movie time. Eddie leans up and pauses the VHS after Clarice leaves the jail for the first time so they can clear the shit out of the fort and change into pajamas.

“You need clothes?” Richie asks, crumbling up the empty Funyuns bag. 

For as anal as Eddie is, he manages to forget pajamas, like, every other week, and Richie is forced to sit too-close to Eddie Kaspbrak dressed in his clothes, which are far too big on Eddie, sweatpants rolled up, t-shirts hanging low to show off the dip of his collarbones. Richie, as a result, spends too much of his time on Fridays screaming at his dick and threatening it with death or worse if it even  _ thinks  _ about getting hard.

“Oh, uh, yeah,” Eddie says as he plucks their used, greasy napkins off the comforter floor of the blanket fort. His cheeks are a little pink and, despite his best efforts, his lips are shiny with pizza grease, and Richie thinks he might actually implode.  _ Cute, cute cute _ .

“You got it, chief.”

Richie takes the empty pizza box--they kind of pride themselves on how easy it is to crush a large, splitting it five and five--and stuffs it into the kitchen trash can before he swings around the corner and heads up to his room to change. He pulls off his jeans and shimmies into his Ninja Turtle pajama bottoms, strips off his Hawaiian shirt and switches the NASA t-shirt under it for his Freese’s shirt. Before he goes back downstairs, he ruffles his fingers through his hair and grabs his Batman shirt and a pair of gray sweats for Eddie.

“Here ya go, Eduardo Spaghardo.” Richie tosses him the clothes and, in an effort to avoid things getting  _ mad  _ awkward, he crawls into the fort while Eddie changes. Before, when they were still kids, it wasn’t an issue, and it isn’t an issue when it’s more than just the pair of them hanging out, but when Eddie’s baby fat started melting into smooth, lean muscle and Richie became very, very aware of the dark, wispy hairs that sprouted under the kid's bellybutton and trailed down into the waistband of the stupid white briefs his mother still buys for him, things shaped up to get weird fast, so, Richie did what he could to keep his blood fully circulating through his body and not shooting straight to his very not-straight, very in-love, very shitty-at-taking-orders dick.

Eddie crawls in next to him, and Richie’s heart stutters at the look of him, soft and cozy, and has to make a joke, has to say something stupid before his mouth hauls off and tells Eddie how adorable he is, tells him how good he looks in Richie’s clothes.

“What’s it like being a midget? Is it fun?” Richie asks, tone painted serious, but he's grinning big and toothy when Eddie shoves a shoulder into his and grumbles.

“I’m, like, average height, asshole. I’m taller than Ben!”

Richie shrugs, “You can both be midgets, Eddie. You being tiny and Ben being tiny aren’t mutually exclusive, dude.”

“Put the fucking movie on, Trashmouth.”

Richie does, leaning up to press Play, and then he settles down properly with Eddie, dragging up the extra blanket stashed inside the fort over his legs as a shield of sorts when Eddie budges in close, the loose collar of the Batman shirt dipping nearly down to his sternum.

Eddie’s okay for the next five minutes, but he jumps a mile and makes a wounded sound in the back of his throat when Clarice pulls off the fabric covering the jar with the dude’s head in it.

“Shit,” Eddie says, ever the wordsmith, especially in times of trouble, and scootches in even closer to Richie, balling his fist in the blanket and tugging at it weakly, “Ew, God, I forgot about that part.”

“You good?” Richie asks, and this time, his serious tone isn’t a bit, isn’t a joke. He looks to Eddie’s eyes to verify when Eddie nods.

“Yeah, man, no worries,” Eddie says, too fast, and finally pulls at the blanket hard enough that it drapes over the both of them.

He’s okay again then, but the autopsy scene makes him squirmy, and by the time they yank the bug cocoon out of the dead girl’s throat, Eddie is snuggling into Richie. He goes as far as grabbing Richie’s arm and winding it around himself, settling into Richie’s side, his chin resting on Richie’s pec in a way that should probably smart after a couple seconds, but is a pleasant, comfortable weight.

When Dr. Lecter flips his lid and starts eating the prison guards, Eddie, who hasn’t moved, buries his face in Richie’s neck, and Richie shivers when he feels the warm pants of breath against the sensitive skin there, Eddie’s lips grazing his jugular vein, probably feeling his fluttering pulse. Richie’s really hoping he either doesn’t notice (fat chance) or thinks it’s because of the movie.

“Hey, Eds, it’s cool, I’ll tell you when to look,” Richie murmurs, so quiet he can barely hear himself, but Eddie must hear him somehow, because he hums softly in response, rubs his nose against the column of Richie’s throat.

Eddie stays there, his long, fluttery eyelashes brushing Richie’s sensitive skin as he blinks, his arm flinging itself easily over Richie’s waist under the blanket, until the ambulance scene is over. Richie tells him he can look again, and Eddie turns his head, but he stays put, the soft waves of his hair ticking against Richie’s jaw.

“What happened?” Eddie asks, flicking his eyes over to try and meet Richie’s gaze. Richie flicks his own eyes back, locking onto those big, chocolately eyes. “What’d he do, Rich?”

“Well,” Richie tightens his arm around Eddie, and Eddie shuffles a bit, resting his cheek against Richie’s chest, “He, like… Ate a dude’s face. And then took the other dude’s face and wore it like a mask.”

“Gross,” Eddie declares, nose wrinkled up, “Cannibalism is fucking nasty.”

At that, Richie barks out a laugh--he can’t help it, it just sort of bubbles up out of him, and when he glances down, he sees that Eddie is smiling just a little, a wry tugging at the corners of his pretty pink lips.

“Well worked, Columbo, you’ve done it again!”

Eddie smacks at his hip weakly, but doesn’t move away or bitch back. He stays where he is, and Richie splits his attention between rubbing his thumb in little circles and lines and swirls over the spot where his hand is curled loosely around Eddie’s bicep, looking at the way Eddie’s face distorts when it’s mushed against his torso, and, like, kind of watching the movie, too, if only a little.

They finish it, with Eddie drawn up as tense as a bowstring during the whole chase scene through the dark house, but he cries out a satisfied  _ “Fuck yeah!” _ when Clarice unloads all her rounds into Buffalo Bill, slaps one hand against Richie’s hip and one hand against Richie’s flank. When the credits roll, he demands to know what the fuck happens next, and Richie has to break the news that, unfortunately, that’s all the guy’s written so far, even though there are rumors about a third book in the series coming out eventually.

“Holy shit, my fucking pulse is through the roof!” Eddie shouts, finally wriggling away from Richie to wrap his fingers of one hand around the other wrist as he looks to his watch.

Richie recognizes the tone of his voice, and he knows that if he doesn’t diffuse the situation, there’s absolutely potential for Eddie to slip into a panic attack. That’s what his doctor calls the episodes, anyway--to Richie, they’re just piss-pants scary moments where Eddie can’t breathe and sometimes, during bad ones, keeps saying he’s gonna die.

“Hey, hey, you’re good, Eds,” Richie says, his voice uncharacteristically soft, and he sees when that registers with Eddie, sees the way Eddie’s eyes shift from his watch to Richie’s face. He smiles and reaches for Eddie’s right hand, the one wrapped around his left wrist, and slowly pries his fingers off, one by one. He folds the fingers into a fist, then bops his own fist against the knuckles. “You made it through, dude. What did you think?”

“Never again,” Eddie swears, shaking his head, “I thought I was gonna, like, shit my pants when he bit that guard’s face.”

Richie laughs again, a loud belly-laugh, and reaches out a hand to card through Eddie’s hair, beaming like a moron when Eddie doesn’t give him the finger, doesn’t even duck his head away.

“Let’s go get you some celebratory, “I didn’t shit in Richie’s nicest sweatpants” ice cream, champ.”

\---

While upstairs, Eddie heads to the bathroom to pee and Richie grabs the ice cream from the freezer, snags two spoons out of the cutlery drawer, and pokes his head into the living room, where his parents are settled on the sofa, his mom crocheting something, his father reading a thick book, and some sitcom playing low on the television.

“Having fun, Rich?” Wentworth asks, thumbing the paragraph he’s on before he looks up, “Mom said you guys watched that Winona Ryder movie.”

“Yeah, _Heathers_ ,” Richie says, and then Eddie is padding up to stand beside him, and he takes the opportunity to throw an arm over Eddie’s shoulders. “We just finished _Silence of the Lambs_ and Eddie here didn’t even piss himself once, so we’re celebrating.”

Wentworth snorts, Maggie smiles fondly at them, and Eddie turns a pretty shade of scarlet, scowls, ducks away from Richie’s arm. He grabs the frosty cardboard carton and one of the spoons, turns towards the door to the basement, not saying anything. Richie swears he hears his mother make a soft sound when he immediately turns and follows Eddie, hot on the kid’s heels, and _he_ knows that _she_ knows it has very little to do with Eddie thieving the ice cream.

The two slide back into the blanket fort, and Richie rewinds the tape before he switches it out for The _Muppet Movie_. Eddie winds up slipping back out of the fort to adjust the topmost sheet, muttering something about not wanting to suffocate, and Richie rolls his eyes as an achy sort of fondness crests inside his chest, crackling through his ribs, zapping along his goosebumped arms.

They dig into the ice cream, eating it fat spoonful by fat spoonful--Richie is so stupidly proud of Eddie, knows that if sixteen-year-old Eddie went back and told thirteen-year-old Eddie that he’d be doing this without going off his little rocker about all the germs of double-dipping, the twerp would call him crazy and probably insult the way he wears his hair now--as the movie starts. Eddie hums along to “Rainbow Connection” when the banjos kick in, and Richie starts belting out the lyrics in his best Kermit Voice just to make Eddie giggle, teeth clacking against the spoon he’s got stuck in his mouth. Somehow, by the time the second verse starts, Richie’s voice shifts, and he’s just singing, waving his spoon along to the rhythm, and Eddie sings, too, voice prettier and more well-practiced than Richie’s, and they kind of just do that for the rest of the song. Richie would say it was wonderful, feels wonderful, but he’s not a sap, so he just thinks it’s kind of cool that he and Eddie sound good singing together.

When the song ends, Eddie turns to Richie fully--well, as fully as he can, lying back inside the fort--and sticks his spoon into the ice cream, digging out another glob.

“I thin’ I might sing’at for my audition,” Eddie garbles around his bite, hissing when the cold hits his sensitive teeth, “Will’ya help me with it?”

“Sure, Eds, I can probably learn it,” Richie shrugs, rolling onto his side, elbow bending under him so he can pillow his head in the palm of his hand, “Do you gotta, like, give them sheet music? For the audition… piano guy? Because Bill probably has it somewhere; you know Georgie fucks hard with the Muppets.”

Eddie smiles, and there’s a shy sort of edge to it that makes Richie raise his eyebrows, feeling them slipping up past the curls of his messy bangs.

“Yeah, well, we can, but, uh, Mr. Burk said today that we could, um, bring our own accompaniment? If we could, like, play it ourselves or… had a friend play it.”

Richie’s eyes go wide and he knows, he  _ knows,  _ they’re filling with something that is unmistakably affection.

“Oh?”

“I figured, if you wanted,” Eddie says, mouth working faster than his brain, words slurring together a little, “you could, like… Do that? Mr. Burk said we could do, um, guitar or piano, but I know you’ve been, like, working on ukulele, and I bet he’d let us, you know--” Eddie cuts himself off and shrugs, his cheeks tinting red.

God, Richie’s fucked. He’s absolutely, head-over-heels,  _ fucked  _ levels in love with this dumbass kid in front of him, wearing  _ his  _ fucking Batman shirt, wearing  _ his  _ sweatpants cuffed up so he doesn’t trip on them, sporting a drying dribble of melted chocolate ice cream in the corner of his lips and Christ, Richie wants to lick it off.

He settles, instead, for reaching out his thumb and swiping at it, rubbing it away into nothing. Eddie doesn’t flinch at the touch, and Richie’s stupid, stupid heart soars.

“Sure, Eds,” Richie repeats, floored and thrilled by how even, unwavering his voice sounds, “No problemo. We can, like, practice tomorrow before we meet up with the others.”

Eddie’s face splits into a grin, The Grin, the one he reserves almost solely for Richie. His dimples are out in full force, eyes crinkling up at the edges, pointy teeth digging into his plush bottom lip just enough to dent into the petal-pink flesh and Richie is so, so _fucked_ , more fucked every day, more fucked every time he looks at Eddie.

Eddie scoops up another bite of ice cream and bobs his head, turns back to watch the movie. “Thanks, Reach,” he says, and Richie swears his soaring heart, the fuckin’ traitor, backflips its way into his throat at the nickname, one Eddie uses so rarely anymore.

Richie doesn’t say anything back, just kind of nods dumbly, and they settle in to watch the movie, slowly scraping their spoons through the melting ice cream. Richie’s stomach starts to hurt by the time they scrape the bottom of the cardboard, but he muscles through it, lets Eddie finish off the last bite of what has essentially become too-sweet chocolate milk, then tosses their spoons into the empty container and shoves it out of the fort so they can lay back and snuggle up under the blanket again.

He doesn’t expect Eddie to cuddle in as close as he had for the scary shit, but he’s pleasantly surprised when Eddie does, leaning heavily against him, sighing his contentment into the humid air of the fort when Richie stretches an arm out and circles his skinny shoulders with it.

It isn’t late, is probably not even ten o’clock, but Richie feels himself starting to nod off. He tends to be a bit of an insomniac (thanks, Ritalin), so feeling like he could sleep so early is refreshing, in a way. It isn’t his fault, though; he’s got a too-full belly, he’s warm with the blanket and the cozy weight of Eddie against him, and the movie is comforting, familiar. So, he lets his eyes slip closed in longer and longer blinks, and he hears the tell-tale snuffle of Eddie also falling asleep, his head on Richie’s chest, his breaths puffing out against the big “F” in the Freese’s logo.

\---

Richie blinks himself awake after an indiscernible amount of time. It feels late, but he has no clue, just knows that the VHS is over and the TV screen is black and he’s spooning Eddie and  _ uh oh, whoopsie _ .

They’ve woken up like this before--and, a few memorable times, reversed, with Eddie monkeyed along Richie’s back in a sorry attempt at being the big spoon--but tonight it feels intense, feels much more intimate, and Richie dazedly, sleepily, wonders  _ why _ . It’s Friday.

Fridays are  _ like this _ .

Barreling onward, because, like, what else is there to do, he nuzzles his head between Eddie’s shoulder blades and jostles the boy in his arms, burying a tired, soft smile in the nape of Eddie’s neck when he hears the grumbly little grunt Eddie’s throat lets out.

“Hey, ‘Skeds, we should go’da bed,” Richie mumbles, sleepy tongue feeling big and heavy. He swallows a couple’a times, trying to work moisture back into his mouth, knows he was probably sleeping with his big mouth wide open because something about the basement at night makes his sinuses go funny, makes him sniffle like he’s got a cold.

“M’n b’d,” Eddie says back, speaking through an almost-closed mouth, vowels be damned. Thankfully, Richie has had over a decade of studying Kaspbrakian, and he just huffs a breath in through his stuffy nose and wiggles Eddie again.

“C’mon, y’big slug, I know you’ll piss and moan in the mornin’ if y’hurt your neck sleepin’ here.”

Eventually, after far more convincing than Richie should be expected to dish out when he’s fucking wiped out, too, after Richie promises Eddie that yes, they have Lucky Charms in the pantry, he’s sure Maggie bought some, and Eddie can have, like, six bowls in the morning if he really wants them. By the time Richie is offering to help Eddie smuggle the box into his own home, past Mrs. K’s sniffer-dog sense of knowing when Richie is, in her mind, turning her little Eddie-bear into a regular delinquent, they’re shuffling out of the fort, Richie turning off the VCR and the television, listening to the way the screen fizzles when it kicks off.

They make their way up the stairs, Eddie still mostly asleep, Richie shoving him along from behind. Richie squints at the clock on the stove in the kitchen--3:58am--and grabs Eddie’s shoulders to steer him up the next set of stairs, shushing him when Eddie audibly whines at having to climb them.

Once they’re safely inside Richie’s room, Eddie flops onto the bed while Richie fumbles with the forest-green plug of the Christmas lights he has draped around the upper part of his walls, snapping it into the outlet before he turns the overhead light off. Eddie’s made big strides, but he still gets a little wigged out in the dark sometimes, and the soft glow of the off-white lights cast all kinds of pretty shadows over his freckled cheeks, so Richie isn’t complaining, no sir.

Richie tumbles into bed next to Eddie, tosses his glasses onto his nightstand, tugs the fluffy green duvet over the both of them, and he feels his heart smile-- _ sappy, Richard, sappy _ \--when Eddie scoots closer to him, close enough that they’re practically sharing a pillow.

“G’night, Eds,” Richie whispers, sure that Eddie is too asleep already to hear him.

“Mmm,” Eddie responds, rubbing the tip of his nose against the sleeve of Richie’s t-shirt. He goes quiet, then hums again, leans forward, and drops a tiny kiss to the very corner of Richie’s lips. “Ni’, Rich.”

What the fuck.

_ What the fuck. _

Richie brings a hand up to the spot Eddie kissed-- _ kissed _ , holy shit--and trips his fingers over it, feeling the ghost of pressure there. His mind is racing and there’s no way he’s going to be able to sleep now, but he’s content with that, holy shit, he’s fucking thrilled about it.

Until.

“Oh,  _ shit _ .”

Eddie is suddenly pushing away from him, like, actually pushing, and scrambling away so fast he almost tips himself off the bed. Richie reaches a hand out to steady him, and when his palm settles on the sharp bone of Eddie’s hip, their eyes meet, and it becomes clear that Eddie, too, is suddenly very awake.

“Rich, I--”

“It’s fine,” Richie says, voice tight, voice cracking, squeaking. _Fuck_.

“No, no, it’s not,” Eddie shakes his head, catches his lower lip between his teeth and gnaws on it, rolling the flesh, trying to soothe himself.

Richie watches the way the shadows dance on his face as he moves, thinks he feels the world stop spinning for a second when the reality of  _ oh, fuck, shit’s hitting the fan _ crashes over him like a cold sweat after a nightmare. He expects Eddie to crawl away, half-expects he’ll fucking leave then and there, just grab his shit and go home, but then Eddie is looking at his eyes, glancing down to his lips, back up at his eyes, and oh, wait,  _ wait _ .

“Eddie--”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t…” Eddie blurts out, slaps a hand over his mouth a second later. He takes a steadying breath through his nose, and when he lets it out, it makes this pathetic little whistling sound. “I…”

“It’s alright, Eddie,” Richie tries. He knows he sounds desperate but, well, he kind of is, so. He drums the fingers of the hand on Eddie’s hip slowly, purposefully. “It’s okay.”

Stupidly, Richie assumes that the relieved look that flashes through Eddie’s eyes means he’ll settle down and go to sleep and they can ignore and repress this shit over their morning glass of OJ, but the issue with that is, of course, that Richie is  _ stupid _ .

All of a sudden, Eddie is surging forward again, his hands on Richie’s chest, where he’d literally just pushed Richie a couple minutes before, and he’s fitting his soft lips over Richie’s chapped ones.

Well. Alright, then.

And also, on that note,  _ hell yeah _ .

Richie slides his hands up to cup Eddie’s jaw, kisses him back soundly, breathes shared air with him when Eddie pulls back enough to rest their foreheads together, and Richie feels his heart crackling in his chest as it absolutely triples in size, a real Grinch disaster.

“Eddie…” Richie whispers, lips close enough to Eddie’s that when he speaks, their cupid’s bows brush, catch on each other, and when Eddie looks into his eyes, he can’t help lifting his chin, their lips meeting again.

Richie has, like, zero practice with this--Spin the Bottle doesn’t count, and he only ever played that once, and he wound up kissing fucking Heather Pierce, and that double doesn’t count--but Eddie is either easy to kiss or he’s been secretly macking on people on the side because it’s only scary for, like, two seconds, and then it gets good.

He dances his fingers over the ends of Eddie’s hair while his thumbs run around Eddie’s jaw, and when Richie takes a chance and flicks the tip of his tongue out between his lips, Eddie makes a sound, one Richie has never heard before and, oh, holy  _ God _ , Eddie “Good Boy” Kaspbrak is letting Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier slip him the tongue.

Richie’s got plans to ask Eddie just how he made that noise, ask where the fuck it came from in his mouth or his throat or whatever, but when Eddie’s tongue swipes against Richie’s own and curls a bit to run over the sharp edge of Richie’s overbite, he finds that he no longer needs to ask.

They do this for a bit, languid, slow, smooth as butter, and when they pull apart, they’re both having just a little trouble pulling air into their lungs, and they’re both absolutely grinning like fools.

“Eddie,” Richie says simply, shakes his head, manhandles Eddie until they’re lying down, facing each other, Richie’s leg pushed between Eddie’s so they can tangle together like they do in the hammock at the clubhouse.

“Richie,” Eddie says back, giggles bright and happy, and Richie has to lean in and kiss him again, just once more, because he can’t  _ not _ .

“How… Eds, baby, angel, what, and I really, really can’t stress this enough, the  _ fuck _ , man?” Richie grabs Eddie’s hand, locks their fingers together, grins when he sees the blush darkening on Eddie’s cheeks, hopes it’s because of the pet names. “How long have you wanted to do that?”

“How long have  _ you  _ wanted to do that, asshole?” Eddie snaps back, sounding almost angry, but even without his specs, Richie can see his fucking eyes, Richie knows better, Richie was just kissed so good by the little turd that his legs feel like jelly.

Richie opens his mouth to stammer out an answer, but he’s interrupted by Eddie letting out a huge, jaw-cracking yawn.

“Oh, I’m fucking _sorry_ ,” Richie says, scandalized, “Am I  _ boring  _ you, Edward? Is me processing the fact that you, evidently, want to touch tips with me as much as I want to touch tips with you fucking boring to you?”

Eddie laughs at that, too loud, and covers his mouth with his hand, rolls his eyes. He turns to look at the glowy red numbers of Richie’s alarm clock, then shakes his cute little head, wrinkles up his cute button nose, and tosses his cute little arms around Richie in a big ol’ hug.

Hugging him back, a little surprised, Richie pets at Eddie’s back through the t-shirt simply because he can, and that’s a heady thought, and he’s so caught up in all these  _ feelings  _ he’s feeling that, for the first time since he learned what his dick was for, it takes a backseat and lets Richie just bask for a second.

“C’n we talk about this t’morrow?” Eddie asks, speaking entirely into Richie’s chest. Richie feels himself nodding, knows Eddie can feel it too, and then Eddie is pulling back a little rolling over to face away from Richie.

“Turnin’ your back on me so soon, sugah?” Richie asks in a Voice even he can’t place, but he knows what Eddie wants, spoons up to him, tucks Eddie into his chest.

“Go t’sleep, dipshit,” Eddie mutters, clearly taking his own sage advice.

“Anything for you, babycakes.”

Eddie grunts, tips his head back against Richie’s collarbone and twists his neck to give Richie an ineffective glare. Richie responds by dropping a kiss to the tip of his nose, which makes Eddie smile in spite of himself and settle back down.

“G’night, idiot.”

Richie squeezes Eddie just this side of too tight and buries his face in the nape of Eddie’s neck when the boy sighs.

“Night, Spaghetti.”

They’ll talk about it in the morning--Richie won’t let Eddie off the hook and he doubts Eddie will let him, either--and they’ll figure shit out and if there’s a god that cares about them, they’ll get to practice tonsil hockey some more, but only after they brush their teeth, because Eddie moans like he’s been shot when he has to deal with Richie’s morning breath under normal circumstances. Maybe Richie’ll fuck around and call Bev and Stan while Eddie showers, maybe he’ll run and tell his Mom, or maybe he’ll wait, bask, make sure Eddie won’t kick his scrawny ass for blabbing before he’s ready for people to know. Maybe he’ll spend the rest of his life with this boy sleeping peacefully in his arms, not wiggling away in disgust or horror when Richie’s breath puffs against the topmost knob of his spine, makes the little hairs there stand on end.

God, he loves Fridays.

**Author's Note:**

> AHHH THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE THINGS I'VE WRITTEN IN FOREVER.
> 
> talk to me on here or Tumblr (@summercarntspel) or Twitter (@polythene_sum)! comments are my bread and butter; ask me about my other fics based on songs I have stuck in my head 25/8


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